Everyone Loves Mel or Mel is a low budget 1998 film that is about a turtle. Sorry, tortise. The film is another unknown film that upon doing research, you will not find much information. But with that being said, the film itself stars the great Ernest Borgnine (Escape from New York and another low budget crap fest, 2000's Castle Rock) and notably Bug Hall (from Little Rascals). The film is directed by Joey Travolta (the brother of John Travolta)
The film follows two brothers, Roger and Travis. Roger is a troublemaker and they decide to send the boys to their grandpas. The area has a legend about a mythical creature and the rich guy of the town wants to hunt the creature. But perhaps the grandpa knows more about the creature more than anyone else.....
I had very low expectations for this film and I was somewhat surprised. The acting was not great but I have seen far far worse in other films. The characters seem to be very dated 90's sterotypes. For example, Roger. Just the way he acts is very cliche and sterotypical and his actions are very predictable. Travis is not very important but at times does make jokes that come of as annoying rather than funny. Grandpa is very likeable but is still victim to the old man, living off the land sterotype. He is really likeable only really due to the fact that Ernest Borgnine portrays him. The villain of the film is a very sterotypical villain with your typical motives. Now the main star is Mel, the giant tortise. When I look at the cover of this film (and let me clarify that this film is in a box set with seven other family films released by Echo Bridge) and like the other films in the box set, have misleading cover art and to be honest, this film is technically called Mel and not Everyone Loves Mel. But my point being was that I was gonna get a really crappy CGI sort of creature (or monster at that). To my surprise they use practical effects for Mel (and I am not sure if it is all puppetry or animatronics or what). With that being said, it is cheap and is not very pretty to look at. Now for a smooth transition here. In the film, it is mentioned once (and even then, it is something that I did not catch right away) that Mel supposedly has an ability. All that I am going to say is that the ending of this film made me decide to give this film the four star rating instead of the intended five star rating. It is quite stupid. Which leads me to another smooth transition. The tone. The tone of this film starts of rather dark and there are several points in the film where it will get really dark. Which is fine but it is inconsistent and there are huge tonal shifts throughout the film. For example, the film (as I have already said) begins on a dark note and ends on a really silly note too. I suppose the best way to describe this film is a poor mans version of Free Willy, if the whale is a turtle and this film lacks a lot of the charm from Free Willy.
I cannot say that I really hate this film at all. I believe that a four star rating for me signifies that I do not like a film, but I don't straight up hate the film. This was the case with this film. I found it rather easy to watch, I at times found the sterotypes and cliches to be rather fun to watch and the acting is not as bad as one may think. Which may sum up this film in general. It is bad, but not as bad as one may think.
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